


But It’s Not Like I Don’t

by dandelionandburdock



Series: 1directionelite challenge 1 [1]
Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-14
Updated: 2012-11-14
Packaged: 2017-11-18 16:27:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/563050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dandelionandburdock/pseuds/dandelionandburdock
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The <i>Dimples</i> and <i>Eyebrows</i> nicknames stick and the public respond to this. Harry and Cara often get asked if they’re dating. Harry never answers no, but he never says yes either – for the past year he has become an expert on not giving journalists any real answers, while leaving them with the impression that he has (or maybe he just thinks so). Cara is more direct about it – <i>“I’m not going to answer that because I’d like to keep my private life private.”</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	But It’s Not Like I Don’t

**Author's Note:**

> I just wanted to play around with the idea a bit, okay? I mean, I don’t think it’s such a popular ship but I think they make a great fluff ship, so.

 

 

It was only natural that the two of them met – if it wasn’t this time, it still would’ve happened eventually. Both of them were young, famous, and outgoing; both of them travelled a lot because of their work but still ended up in London on the same events.

So nobody was surprised when Harry and Cara met – they met lots of people, after all. Nobody was surprised to see them going around together either. Most of their acquaintances didn’t really expect them to become such good friends, though.

 

~.-.~

 

Harry likes Cara’s flat because it’s so different from his and Louis’s. It’s not so spacious – just the size for a girl who travels a lot – but it’s full with gifts she has brought from her trips. Stuff like pendants, which, instead of being put in a jewelry box, just hang on the walls and from various surfaces ( _“I’ll probably never wear them anyway,”_ Cara says when Harry comments on that); or many photos of her and her colleagues back stage; or that gigantic poster of a girl with beautiful tattoos all over her body that he absolutely adores right from the first moment he has laid eyes on it. Harry suspects that otherwise the whole lodging would look uninhabited if not for those souvenirs.

The souvenirs aren’t the only thing Harry adores about Cara’s flat though. He’s practically in love with her closet.* He knows she’s quite the tomboy, and that she has tons and tons of jeans, and leather jackets, and white shirts; before he actually saw it, he also thought there must be lots of fancy clothes in there, too – taken straight from the runaway, given to her as a gift; and even though now he knows that’s not exactly the case, he still believes that she’s hiding those clothes _somewhere._ Cara often has to explain to him that that’s not how the fashion industry works, but Harry never really bothers to listen.

“You really don’t believe me!” Cara exclaims loudly after Harry has raised the question again, in the middle of them watching _Taken._ It’s right before the band’s about to set off on their world tour and Cara and Harry are having something like a goodbye evening.

“I’m just saying that it’s _impossible_ for you to not have something like that. The people I work for give me stuff, so why wouldn’t fashion brands give something to you, too?”

Cara rolls her eyes, annoyed. “We’re talking about pieces worth thousands. Given the size of my contract, it’s not logical for them to give me anything more.”

“No, it is,” Harry keeps on insisting. _“Seriously,_ ” Cara thinks, _“he’s like a child.”_

She crosses her arms in front of her chest, pressing her lips, her eyebrows furrowed on her forehead.

Suddenly Cara turns to Harry he has already forgot about their argument and is now watching the movie. “What will you give me if I prove you wrong?”

“What?” Harry doesn’t even turn his head away from the screen at first.“What will you give me if I prove to you that I don’t have anything that I have worn on the runaway, except the pieces I have bought myself?”

Harry frowns – he doesn’t like bets, he’s too good at losing them. If he accepts her offer, he should think of something that won’t be too hard to provide her with.

“Okay,” he says in the end. “If you prove that to me, I’ll give you my Range Rover.”

“No. I can’t drive.”

Harry sighs; he forgot about that. “Okay, what about… um…” He really can’t think of anything. “A new jacket. Whichever you pick, whenever you pick it – I’m getting it for you.”

“It’s a deal, I guess,” Cara quickly agrees.

  
  
Cara lets Harry search through her closet for several hours until both of them are too tired to talk or even keep their eyes open.

She walks in the room, holding two cups of hot chocolate and preparing to go to sleep. She thinks how she must start picking a new jacket, something leather maybe. And comfy. And warm because a new series of fashion weeks is coming and she’d like to have something to wear before and after the shows.

“Anything interesting, Haz?” she asks, sitting down on the floor right behind the curly head who’s buried in her clothes.

“Actually, yes.”

Cara raises her eyebrow. Has he found one of her Halloween costumes?

“This!” He turns to her with the happiest smile on his face, his dimples deeper than Cara has ever seen them. In his hands there is a simple black tux; it looks quite big for Cara’s slender figure and also, too manly to be part of a regular girl’s closet, even if a model’s one.

The girl lets out a small gasp. She remembers the piece now – she remembers when she wore and why she wore it. It was on one of her first shows; she did it for free for a debutant designer who had freshly left some posh academy and was trying to work his way up to the fashion elite. He had liked Cara and offered her the tux she had worn on his show (the whole collection was based on men clothing, adjusted to be worn by women), as he wasn’t paying her anything else. She had accepted it and had even worn the piece several times, but with the growth of her contracts, she had just forgotten about it.

She can, of course, lie about it now and say that some friend must have left it. But she doesn’t.

“You win,” she admits instead and looks at Harry in expectation. _“What is he going to do?”_ There isn’t really much for him to do, though, except to celebrate that he’s proven himself right.

“What do I get?” Harry asks, victorious.

“We never talked about you getting anything,” Cara doesn’t miss a beat; she smiles playfully.

“Yeah, but it was more like a… more like a given.”

“Don’t you like your moral prize?” she asks. She knows he doesn’t; he always wants a bit more.

“No.” _“Of course.”_ “ _Nobody_ likes moral prizes,” he explains. “It’s like when you don’t win the award and everybody tells you that you should be happy for being nominated.”

“That’s a consolation prize.” Cara’s playing with him, teasing him – she really finds this whole situation amusing. Plus, she wants to see how persistent he can be.

“Pretty much the same thing,” Harry waves it off. He shrugs. “Look, I just want something. I spent the last few hours in here.”

“Well, I didn’t _make_ you do it. I _offered_ you a bet and _you_ agreed to it,” she explains calmly.

Harry frowns. Then, a second later, he turns his big green eyes to her and makes his expression of a kitten, lost in the rain, which always makes people melt and succumb to his wishes. “But I really want a reward.”

Cara sighs. She’s ready to agree, but she plans to bargain with him for something small. “Okay, what do you want?”

Harry’s face lightens up. “The tux,” he lifts it in front of his face.

Cara bites her lip – to give it or not? It’s old and she had even forgotten about it. But it’s one of her first memories as a model.

“No,” she shakes her head in the end. “Pick something else.”

“I want this,” Harry keeps insisting like a small child.

“What you’re going to do with it anyway?” she is trying to convince him by making him think logically. “It’s women’s – you can’t wear it.”

“That’s what you say!” Harry objects. And with this, as if to make this whole situation even more absurd, he gets up quickly from the ground and puts the tux on. He stays there, over Cara, his hands on his hips, his chin up in the air, like Superman, waiting for her approval.

For a moment she doesn’t know how to react. The tux is his size, even though it’s a little tight on his shoulders. But the way he wears it, is a bit too much for Cara to handle. She burst into laughter, not believing Harry’s determination.

“So what?” he asks as if he hasn’t notices her reaction. “Can I keep it?”

 

~.-.~

 

Harry even goes to some fancy restaurant with the tux on once. People on the Internet make fun of him because of that. _“Harold u ok?” “You’re international pop star, you can afford clothes your size.”_ ** Cara laughs along them because she can’t believe he has actually worked up the confidence to wear it out in the public. (No, she can, but all those candids seem too hilarious to be real.)

 

> _@Harry_Styles You work that tux, gorgeous. X_
> 
> _@Caradelevingne Ever doubted me, Eyebrows?_
> 
> _@Harry_Styles Never have, never will. X_
> 
> _@Harry_Styles Dimples. X_

 

~.-.~

 

The _Dimples_ and _Eyebrows_ nicknames stick and the public respond to this. Harry and Cara often get asked if they’re dating. Harry never answers no, but he never says yes either – for the past year he has become an expert on not giving journalists any real answers, while leaving them with the impression that he has (or maybe he just thinks so). Cara is more direct about it – _“I’m not going to answer that because I’d like to keep my private life private.”_

People, of course, dwell into it, but Harry and Cara don’t. They never really talk about it because they don’t really think about the nature of their relationship. They are just comfortable around each other and like spending their free time together; they like tweeting and texting each other.

Oh, and Harry wears her tux.

 

~.-.~

 

Harry decides to take a small break. Well, he is _forced_ to.

They are back from their tour and Harry ends up having too much free time with practically everyone he knows in London either outside of the city, or too busy to go out with him. He gets so desperate that he calls some bartender he’s met a few months ago and whom he can’t remember whether he liked or not. He must have liked him to take his number.

Of course, he has to take the night shift for the whole week.

So Harry ends up alone and can’t think of anything better to do than to pull an all-nighter of watching movies (well, he can actually, but he’s not really sure if he’ll be happy with the outcome).

It’s 2am when Cara calls.

“’Sup, Eyebrows?” Harry picks up the phone; he’s half asleep and he speaks even slower than usual.

“Can I come over?”

“Yeah, of course.” He doesn’t even bother to ask _why –_ Cara’s always welcome just like he’s always welcome at her flat. It doesn’t matter it’s 2 o’clock in the morning, it doesn’t matter Harry’s tired, it doesn’t matter if he’s going to be awake when she arrives – he’ll just be happy to have her over.

She arrives five minutes later (she must have been in the cab when she called him, Harry thinks). Harry opens the door and leans on the door frame, hands in the pockets of his track suit, his curls floating around his head like a halo of chocolate waves. (But the thing Cara notices from the whole assembly, are his eyes, half-closed, but still sparkling, wet from being rubbed over too much in attempt of not falling asleep.)

“Is everything okay?” Harry doesn’t sound particularly concerned but he just knows there is nothing fundamentally wrong. She wouldn’t come to him if there was. He can’t really decide whether this makes him feel miserable, disappointed or just a bit sad.

It’s 2am – he’s emotional. So emotional he doesn’t even hear Cara’s answer; so emotional it takes him time to even realize she’s been talking this whole time.

“Sorry, what?”

“You already asleep, Dimples?” She laughs – laugher as light as leaf on the wind. _God, he should write that down and hand it to Ed._

“Maybe a bit,” he gives her a lazy smile as he looks down; he starts rubbing his foot on the _Welcome_ pad _._ “So… what is it?”

“I can’t find my keys,” Cara explains. “For all I know, I might have left them in Milan, or New York, or even Tahiti.” She sighs. “God, I haven’t been home for such a long time. As I said, I can’t call my parents because they’re… somewhere, and my key for theirs was on the same key chain as my own, so… So can I stay over for the night?”

It’s now that Harry finally notices the big travelling bag on the floor. His lips form a surprised _Oh!_. Cara notices this and starts explaining how it’s only for a night because she has to fly to Italy again on the next day anyway.

“Don’t worry, Eyebrows,” he interrupts her. “You can stay as long as you want.”

Cara quickly settles in Harry’s room and then the two of them finish the movie together (not really, they fall asleep ten minutes later, Cara’s head on Harry’s lap, he leaning over her).

  
  
While Cara is in the shower, getting prepared for her flight later, Harry makes breakfast. He doesn’t know what she usually has for breakfast as he’s only seen her eat junk food, so he decides to go with something as simple as pancakes.

“Shit!” Cara’s voice comes from his room. For a moment Harry panics about leaving the pan like this but decides that he has time before the whole thing gets even close to burning.

“Something wrong, Eyebrows?” he asks as he walks in his room.

“I have nothing to wear.”

Harry lifts his eyebrow because he can see lots of T-shirts, tops, and jeans scattered all over the floor. “You have _nothing_ to wear?”

“Yeah.” Cara’s looking through the clothes, she doesn’t even stop when she explains, “Most of my shirts are dirty. I was thinking about doing some laundry while I was resting, you know, at home, but I totally forgot about that when I came here. I don’t even have something decent to go shopping in.”

“So what – take one of mine.” Harry shrugs; it’s seems like an obvious solution to him. It’s not a big deal, after all.

Cara gives him a measuring look.

“Are you sure? I’m not coming back for another month or so.”

“Yeah, it’s okay. I have plenty of tees anyway.”

Cara bites her lip. (For a moment there she wonders if his clothes wouldn’t look too baggy on her, and after that, if someone will notice, and after that, what it will be like wearing something of his, something that smells like him, something that feels like him.)

“Okay,” she agrees in the end.

  
  
It’s weird how she feels quite at home, curled on her seat, huddled inside Harry’s shirt, the taste of burnt pancakes still in her mouth.

 

~.-.~

 

It’s Milan Fashion Week*** and Cara’s quite busy, getting ready for runaways, giving interviews, and then doing the shows. She’s just back in her hotel from one of the shows and she’s in a hurry to get ready for an event the same evening, when the receptionist tells her that there’s a package for her. Cara’s quite surprised but she really doesn’t have the time to wait for the receptionist to go and get it and then give it her. She asks them for someone to bring it to her room later.

  
She finds it on her bed when she gets out of the shower. The package isn’t very big; from what she can see it’s a box.

She looks at the address on top of it and smiles. Cara quickly gets rid of the ugly brown paper the post uses and underneath in discovers a beautiful gift box with a small postcard on it.

 

> _I hope you went shopping, Eyebrows._
> 
> _(I hope you didn’t. Otherwise all of this would be pointless.)_
> 
> _Dimples._

Cara can’t stop smiling as she tries the T-shirts Harry has sent her. Exactly her style, exactly her size.

  
She’s almost late for the event.

 

~.-.~

 

Cara doesn’t get to properly meet Harry until November, and even for this meeting _proper_ is quite generous of an adjective. She wants to give him his shirt back and at the same time she doesn’t. It’s stupid because she had washed it, and then worn it again several times, and it smells like her perfume now. And it wasn’t a gift – it was more like a loan.

Several times she thinks about just giving him a new one and several times she buys him a new one. But still, she ends up with all of Harry’s shirts – the one that she isn’t sure if it still belongs to him and the others that are meant for him – in front of his door.

She rings once, twice, but nobody answers.

_“It’s okay,”_ she thinks. _“I can come back later.”_

But she doesn’t; she doesn’t even go away but just sits on the stairs, leading to the next floor, and waits there.

  
Harry comes an hour later and is surprised to see her in there. It’s an unusual place and in dramatic movies the one sitting on the stairs is usually in a nervous breakdown.

But it’s an unusual place and Cara is an unusual girl, and she doesn’t do the things movie characters do. She’s seems calm and collected, maybe a bit casual, listening to some music. Like just happens to pass by. Like she hasn’t been here for only a few minutes (Harry knows she’s been waiting here – he can tell by the color of her lips which always become paler when she’s been cold for a long).

“Hello, Eyebrows.” He stops in front of her.

She casually takes the earphones out and greets him, “Hello, Dimples.”

They fall silent. Cara’s looking at the ground, playing with her hair (when has she _ever_ behaved like a cliché school girl?); Harry’s looking at her, he has his hands in his pockets and is kicking something with his foot.

“So…?” he finally asks.

“I’m… um… I just wanted to give you these.” Cara hands him the paper bag that she has put the shirts in.

“Thanks, I guess.” Harry says, because he’s not certain what’s in there.

“It’s the shirt you landed me a few… well, a few months ago,” she explains, “and several others I’ve both you as a gift. This is also a _thank you_ for _your_ gift.”

“The shirts in Milan?” Harry doesn’t even try to play casual – he knows what she’s talking about and wants to show her that he remembers.

“Yeah,” she nods. “They were quite nice. I loved them!”

They fall silent again; none of them knows what to say. Harry keeps looking at Cara; he never really breaks his gaze from her.

“You are cold,” he says simply.

She nods, “A bit.”

He quickly takes his own jacket off and puts it over her shoulders. “I’m home anyways,” he shrugs.

“And I can get a cab.” Harry doesn’t know why but Cara seems a bit pissed off by what he just did. This new kind of tension seems to break the previous one that has reigned over them up until now.

“You’ll still be cold.” He attempts a smile but doesn’t see it reflected on Cara’s face. “You know, not all cabs are properly working.”

“Oh my God, Harry.” She rolls her eyes. “It’s a fifteen minutes drive – I won’t die even if I’m a bit cold. I can take care of myself.”

“Prove it to me!” He smiles playfully; they are back to their old selves, it seems.

“How? By dragging you in the taxi with me?”

“Yeah.” Harry gets this challenging look, as if she’s looking her from way above than their usual height difference.

“Okay, you’re up for another bet, Dimples,” she storms past him to the lifts.

“I won the last one,” he reminds her and goes after her. “But I want my jacket back.”

“You can’t have it. I’m keeping it.”

“That’s cheating!”

They continue arguing whether her getting his jacket is cheating or not even in the cab.

 

~.-.~

 

Cara and Harry get out of the taxi laughing but the moment they reach the door of her building, the laughter just stops. Instead, they stare at each other.

It’s been a tough day for both of them – a tough last few hours at least. Harry decides that now is the moment for him to speak, and for them, to talk about something they’ve been avoiding for quite some time. He doesn’t know what’s going on, but he finally feels ready for it. Right now he has that sense of rightness that he feels he’ll never get again.

“Can I butt in?” Harry asks as he moves closer to Cara.

“What? Are you cold, too, _Hot Stuff_?” she smiles playfully in response to his smirk; she seems a bit nervous though. Harry shrugs apologetically, as if he’s saying “How else am I supposed to get to you?”, because, really, they have been playing around for _months_ , and he just wants to know whether they are just friends or more than this.

“Come in,” Cara smiles kindly, as if she’s talking to a child. As if she’s accepting him into her. She opens the jacket, _his_ jacket, her hands still in the pockets, so that Harry could slide in her arms.

When he does, he folds his arms around her tiny waist. They are _so_ close. Harry can feel how warm she is against him; and how cold her fingers are, clutching onto his back, even through the fabric of the jacket.

He closes his eyes and tries to concentrate. Does he want to do this? Can he do this?

Cara looks up to him, just a few inches taller than her; she breathes heavily, her mouth open in awe, her eyes fixed on his face. She’s waiting because she already knows what he’s going to do – she knows him too well now – but she still can’t help but tremble from the thought of it.

One final breath and his lips are on hers.

  
  
“It’s not like I love you, Eyebrows,” he smiles, breathing the words into her mouth.

“It’s not like I love you, Dimples.”

“But it’s not like I don’t.”

**Author's Note:**

> *I really didn’t intend the pun. Really.  
> ** Courtesy of tumblr. I know that’s fictional, but I also know how you’d react.  
> *** I have absolutely no idea in what order fashion weeks are held – for all I know from the local ftv the cities just take turns all year long.


End file.
